Sunny Priyan
The jellyfish galaxy JO206 trails across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, showcasing a colorful star-forming disk surrounded by a pale, luminous cloud of dust.
A handful of foreground bright stars with crisscross diffraction spikes stands out against an inky black backdrop at the bottom of the image.
JO206 lies over 700 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius. Jellyfish galaxies are so-called because of their resemblance to their aquatic namesakes.
The tendrils of jellyfish galaxies are formed by the interaction between galaxies and the intra-cluster medium, a tenuous superheated plasma that pervades galaxy clusters.
The Jellyfish galaxies' tentacles offer a rare chance to study star formation in extreme conditions, far from the galaxy's main disk.
Hubble revealed that star formation in jellyfish galaxy disks and tentacles is similar, indicating the environment has minimal impact on star formation.